All Out N30

by kpbsfs

Good luck to the millions of strikers out tomorrow, but to hell with the union bureaucrats and the labour aristocracy. Let’s make a bonfire of membership cards and make this strike indefinite. Let’s occupy the workplaces and form workers’ councils. Let’s demand more than just final salary pension schemes; the abolition of alienated labour, the dissolution of parliament and David Cameron’s head on a spike.

The Trade Union movement has always been about mediation, compromise and representation. Token militant rhetoric to appease the rank-and-file, from the arbiters between labour and capital whose conciliatory function dampens the genuine radicalism of an alienated and disenchanted workforce. Their field of vision has never extended beyond wages and conditions.

British trade unionism, with its paid officials, reformist outlook, hierarchical structures and it’s ongoing love-affair with the Labour Party, cannot be a vehicle for genuine emancipation any more than Brendan Barber can claim to represent the strikers on the picket lines tomorrow. He and his ilk fantasise about a cosy relationship with a social-democratic Labour government; with ‘beer and sandwiches at number 10′, awarding themselves six-figure salaries for organising and disciplining their membership, channeling any desire for qualitative change into just another wage dispute. Conservative government and austerity gives them a useful opportunity to assume the role of the radical, the defenders of the proletarian interest, the suited and booted workers’ vanguard. They can now up the rhetoric and call a symbolic 24-hour stoppage, play militant and enter into a mutually beneficial tug-of-war with government, whereby the Bullingdon Club can get tough on organised labour (in full view of the Murdoch-Desmond-formerly-Rothermere press) and the union bureaucracy can flex their muscles and show their members that they truly have their best interests at heart, giving them a reminder of why they pay those dues.

A strike needs to be wild, uncontrollable and unmediated. It shouldn’t go through the proper channels or confine itself with due process, legality or the pre-arranged 1-day time-frame dictated by whatever union lackey. It should be accompanied by a healthy dose of rioting, sabotage, occupations, street-parties, road-blocks and arson.